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Zootaxa, Revision of the Fungus-Growing Ant Genera Mycetophylax Emery

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Zootaxa, Revision of the Fungus-Growing Ant Genera Mycetophylax Emery Zootaxa 2052: 1–31 (2009) ISSN 1175-5326 (print edition) www.mapress.com/zootaxa/ Article ZOOTAXA Copyright © 2009 · Magnolia Press ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) Revision of the fungus-growing ant genera Mycetophylax Emery and Paramycetophylax Kusnezov rev. stat., and description of Kalathomyrmex n. gen. (Formicidae: Myrmicinae: Attini) CHRISTIANA KLINGENBERG1 & C. ROBERTO F. BRANDÃO2 1Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe, Abteilung Entomologie, Erbprinzenstr. 13, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] 2Museu de Zoologia, Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Nazaré, 481, Ipiranga, CEP 04313-210 São Paulo, SP, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] Table of contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Material and methods .......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Results and discussion ......................................................................................................................................................... 5 Taxonomic synopsis ............................................................................................................................................................ 5 Mycetophylax Emery 1913 .................................................................................................................................................. 5 Identification key to the genera formerly considered Mycetophylax, based on workers and gynes................................... 5 Mycetophylax Emery, 1913................................................................................................................................................. 6 Identification key for workers and gynes of Mycetophylax................................................................................................ 7 Identification key to Mycetophylax males........................................................................................................................... 7 Mycetophylax conformis (Mayr, 1884)......................................................................................................................... 8 Mycetophylax morschi (Emery, 1888) new combination .......................................................................................... 17 Mycetophylax simplex (Emery, 1888) ........................................................................................................................ 19 Kalathomyrmex new genus ............................................................................................................................................... 21 Kalathomyrmex emeryi (Forel, 1907) new combination ........................................................................................... 22 Paramycetophylax Kusnezov, 1956 revised status ........................................................................................................... 25 Paramycetophylax bruchi (Santschi, 1916) new combination .................................................................................. 26 Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................................................................. 29 References ......................................................................................................................................................................... 29 Abstract Based on the morphology of workers, gynes and males, we revise the taxonomy of nominal taxa traditionally included by authors in the fungus-growing ant genus Mycetophylax. Our results indicate that Mycetophylax Emery (Myrmicocrypta brittoni Wheeler, 1907, type species, by designation of Emery, 1913; junior synonym of Cyphomyrmex conformis Mayr, 1884 by Kempf, 1962) includes M. conformis, M. simplex (Emery, 1888), and M. morschi (Emery, 1888) new combination (formerly in Cyphomyrmex), with several synonymies. Mycetophylax bruchi (Santschi, 1916) does not belong to the same genus and is diagnosed, in addition to other characters, by a psammophore arising at the anterior margin of the clypeus. For this species we are resurrecting from synonymy Paramycetophylax Kusnezov, 1956 (Mycetophylax bruchi as type species, by original designation, with M. cristulatus as its new synonym). Myrmicocrypta emeryi Forel, 1907 is the only attine in which females lack the median clypeal seta and have the antennal insertion areas very much enlarged and anteriorly produced, with the psammophore setae arising from the middle of the clypeus and not at its anterior margin as in Paramycetophylax. Notwithstanding its inclusion in Mycetophylax by recent authors, it is here recognized as belonging to a hitherto undescribed, thus far monotypic genus, Kalathomyrmex new genus (Myrmicocrypta emeryi as its type species, here designated). We redescribe workers, gynes and males of all species in the Accepted by J. Longino: 16 Feb. 2009; published: 25 Mar. 2009 1 three genera and describe for the first time gynes of Mycetophylax conformis and M. simplex, males of M. simplex and M. morschi, and gynes of P. bruchi. Furthermore we present a key to the workers of the taxa treated here (most formerly included under the name Mycetophylax), a key to workers of the Mycetophylax in the revised sense, SEM pictures and high resolution AutoMontage© photographs of the species, along with maps of collection records and a summary of biological observations. Key words: Taxonomic revision, Attini, Mycetophylax, Paramycetophylax revalidated, Kalathomyrmex new genus Introduction Mycetophylax is currently one of the most poorly known genera of the fungus-growing ant tribe Attini (Myrmicinae). The catalogues listing the Neotropical ants (Kempf, 1972; Brandão, 1991; Bolton, 1995, Bolton et al. 2006) register twenty species, subspecies and varieties of Mycetophylax as nomenclaturaly valid, but there is no recent and reliable taxonomic revision of the genus. Interestingly Kempf noted in 1962 that Mycetophylax “certainly is an ill-defined assembly of heterogeneous forms, a residue of classification. Whereas some of its members, such as emeryi, cristulatus and bruchi, are quite distinct from Cyphomyrmex s. str., the type species brittoni (= conformis) is dangerously close to Cyphomyrmex morschi, as Emery already pointed out in 1922 (p. 343). The only good generic difference for workers consists in the absence of a clearly defined and circumscribed antennal scrobe in Mycetophylax." Actually C. morschi does not show a true antennal scrobe, which in general is bordered by a strong carina; C. morschi females present lateral depressions on the head, distinctly less developed than in Cyphomyrmex species. Mayr (1884) described the first species currently included in Mycetophylax, Cyphomyrmex conformis. In 1907, Forel and Wheeler each described a species in Myrmicocrypta, now accepted as Mycetophylax (respectively M. emeryi and M. brittoni), both authors suspecting that these species might not belong to Myrmicocrypta. Wheeler (1911) described the alate forms of M. brittoni (junior synonym of M. conformis by Kempf, 1962) and reinforced the argument for their inclusion in a different genus. Finally, in 1913, Emery recognized Mycetophylax as a distinct taxon, but as a subgenus of Cyphomyrmex, designating M. brittoni Wheeler (1907) as type-species. However, Gallardo (1916) recognized Mycetophylax as a subgenus of Myrmicocrypta. In 1923, Mycetophylax was raised to generic level by Santschi. The same author, in 1922, published a comprehensive but now very much outdated key for the species, subspecies and varieties of the genus. Paramycetophylax was described by Kusnezov in 1956, with Sericomyrmex bruchi as the type species by original designation. Weber (1958) synonymized Paramycetophylax with Mycetophylax, based on similarities of S. bruchi with M. cristulatus. We studied the M. cristulatus types and consider this species a junior synonym of S. bruchi. In 1962, Kempf transferred Cyphomyrmex conformis Mayr (1884), Myrmicocrypta brittoni Wheeler (1907), and Myrmicocrypta emeryi Forel (1907) to Mycetophylax. In 2002, Villesen et al. presented a phylogenetic hypothesis for the tribe Attini. In their analysis Mycetophylax appears as a paraphyletic taxon. Also, in the phylogenetic hypothesis on the fungus symbiosis with Attini ants (Mueller et al. 1998, Mueller 2002) there is no support for the monophyly of the genus, strenghtning Kempf´s (1962) argument that Mycetophylax, in its traditional conception, is not monophyletic. In the most recent phylogeny of the attine fungus-growing ants (Schultz & Brady, 2008), Mycetophylax also appears paraphyletic, with M. emeryi as the sister-group of all Neoattini, and M. conformis and Cyphomyrmex morschi forming a clade diverging later on. Unfortunately, this phylogenetic study did not include Mycetophylax bruchi specimens. Moreover, the very imprecise descriptions of the species included in Mycetophylax by previous authors do not afford easy separation from other Attini genera, and we found grounds to question the present taxonomic status of the species grouped under Mycetophylax, justifying its
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